


Ink Fingerprints

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Beauty - Freeform, Courtly Love, Cultural Differences, F/M, Fingerprints, Gen, Hands, Multiracial Couple, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 22:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13668486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Neal is fascinated by Yuki's hands.





	Ink Fingerprints

Ink Fingerprints

Studying Neal out of the corner of her almond sliced eyes, Yuki saw that his hand was fretting with the sleeve of his shirt. Worried that he would fray the threads of yet another shirt–he was ripping through clothes at a remarkable rate, the tattered garments a reflection of how torn he was between a need to protect the border from the marshaling Scanran menace and a desire to never leave her–she laid a stilling palm over his destructive fingers.  
His fingers curled upward to squeeze hers, and she could hear the fever that warmed his skin as he murmured, “I love your hands.”

“I know that.” Yuki had realized that Neal was fascinated by her hands from the first tentative touch of fingertips, but she couldn’t fathom why. In the Yamani Islands, her hands were considered too chunky for the proper proportions that indicated beauty and grace. Unlike the willowy Shinko, whom Yuki might have envied if she hadn’t been gentle and humble as a lily, she couldn’t wrap her fingers around her wrist. She told herself that she had been born big-boned but inwardly feared that her natural plumpness had been exacerbated by too many rice cakes soaked in honey. “I just can’t understand why.”

There was no sense arguing taste with her betrothed because male fetishes, she knew, were finicky and his was far from the most bizarre. In Jindazhen–near enough to be a perpetual threat in the Yamani Islands, but so far away as to border on the fantastical in Tortall–men craved women’s feet that had been bound and broken into lotuses. Such a fashion had never taken hold in the Yamani Islands, thank Yama for small mercies. Women who could only hobble could not protect their honor or that of their family’s, after all.

“You can tell a lot about a lady from her hands.” Neal traced the outline of her thumb with his. 

“What do mine say to you?” Yuki arched a moth eyebrow. 

“That you’re paradoxically soft”–Neal stroked the sliver of flesh between her thumb and her index finger until she shivered, blaming her goosebumps on the draft that invaded through the cracks between the window panes behind them as the fierce February winds howled into a mullet gray sky–“and strong. That your palms are tender from cherry blossom lotion–they forever smell of that, by the way–but calloused from training. Your hands offer a perfect, grand introduction into the enigma that is you, my love.” 

“The enigma is still your obsession with hands.” Yuki would have pulled out of his grasp if his touch didn’t bring her more pleasure than a perfumed bath. 

“Hands are marvelously useful. Imagine reading, writing, wielding that dreadful glaive of yours without them, or tossing that terrible razor-edged fan of yours without them.” Neal tickled her palm and she bit back a giggle. “They may seem simple because we take them for granted, but they are dazzlingly complex. Healers at the university in Carthak have identified twenty-seven bones in them.” 

“In the Yamani Islands, we are taught how to break all twenty-seven of those bones.” Yuki gave Neal’s finger a teasing twist. 

“Charming.” Neal’s sarcasm was swiftly replaced with reverence as he went on, tilting her hand around so he could stare at her fingerprints, “You have a peacock’s eye on your finger. That’s rare and beautiful, you know. All mine are just simple loops and whorls. Those are the most common types, according to the healer who wrote the definitive treatise on the frequency of fingerprint patterns two centuries ago.” 

“If it’s two centuries old, I don’t see how it’s a reliable source on the frequency of fingerprint patterns today.” Yuki thought a risk of burying his nose in dusty tomes was that he drew on outdated material. 

“The frequency of fingerprint patterns is constant across populations.” Neal waved the hand that wasn’t entwined in hers in lofty dismissal. “The healer performed experiments to determine that.” 

“I don’t agree a fingerprint would be beautiful merely because it is rare.” Yuki rubbed the tip of her ring finger against Neal’s so that the ink of their fingerprints seeped into each other’s skin. In the Yamani Islands, uniqueness was ugliness, not attractiveness. Beauty was order and perfection. It was fitting in, not standing out. She sometimes thought that she would never adjust to Tortallan sensibilities. 

“It’s not beautiful because it’s rare.” Neal raised her fingertips to his lips for a lingering kiss. “It’s beautiful because it belongs to you.”


End file.
